The Godhra Carnage

Difference between Godhra and other tragic incidents

Several people- unable to understand the sufferings of the Hindu society- have asked-
“Why did riots occur only after Godhra? Why was nobody targeted after the Akshardham temple attack-
or after the attacks on Mumbai on 26 November 2008?” Well- the answers are many.

Fact: We have already seen the steps taken by the Government to quell the violence, and in saving the lives of the victims- for example in Sanjeli, Bodeli and Viramgam areas of Gujarat. Hindus were also saved by violent Muslims in many places in Gujarat, like in Jamalpur on 1 March 2002, and in Modasa on 19 March 2002 when Muslims attacked. But there has also been a claim by many that the Gujarat Government was like Hitler and have called these plain riots as ‘holocaust’ and equated them with the killing of Jews in Germany. Let us see the facts.

The Gujarat Government spent a lot of money for providing relief to the riot victims. None other than the UPA Government’s MoS for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal said this in the Rajya Sabha that too in a written reply on 11 May 2005. He said an amount of Rs 1.5 lakh was paid by the government to the next of kin of each person killed and Rs 5,000, Rs 15,000, Rs 25,000 and Rs 50,000 to those injured up to 10, 30, 40 and 50 per cent respectively.

In addition, Jaiswal said relief was also extended by the state government to the victims of the riots under the heads of cash doles and assistance for household kits, foodgrains to Below Poverty Line (BPL) families in affected areas, housing assistance, rebuilding earning assets, rehabilitation of small business, assistance to industries/shop and hotel and so on.

The state government, Jaiswal said has informed that a total of Rs 204.62 crore has been incurred by it towards relief and rehabilitation measures. The Gujarat government has also informed that they had published the data as recommended by the NHRC, he added.

And the Gujarat Government in an advertisement given in weekly India Today dated 6 May 2002 said-

“ At the rate of Rs 30 per person, the Government is spending Rs 35 lakh a day on providing foodgrains to the 1.1 lakh inmates of the 99-odd relief camps in the state, 47 of them in Ahmedabad.

The relief operations at the camps are being directly looked after by IAS officers of the rank of secretary to the state Government.

The camps in Ahmedabad have been divided into six groups. Each group is being monitored by a bureaucrat of the rank of secretary. The secretaries have been looking after the minutest problems of the inmates. Teachers were deputed in each camp to help the children prepare for the exams and the state Health Department has been taking special steps to look after the well being of the inmates. In order to rehabilitate the rural inmates, the Government has floated the Sant Kabir Awas Yojana as per the directions ofPrime Minister A. B. Vajpayee. The scheme will enable the inmates to build houses.”(And in these camps were 1 lakh Muslims and 40,000 Hindus as well).

Not just this, the then Central Government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee also gave several packages to the victims- both Hindus and Muslims. He announced one on 4 April 2002 on his visit to Gujarat and gave another one on 1 May 2002 of Rs 150 crore.

More details of the help with the astronomical amount of money spent and vast range of help given with SIT confirmation is given in the book.

How ridiculous to equate this with Hitler! Did Hitler ever spent crores on helping Jews or other Christian Germans affected by violence? He ordered killing of Jews- not spending of money to help them. Has any government in the world ever cared about minority Hindus who suffered like this? In the 1971 East Pakistan genocide, West Pakistani soldiers killed around 2 million Hindus (and also other Bangladeshi Muslims when their leader declared that Bangladeshis are un-Islamic) and also raped at least 2,50,000 Bengali women. From 1947, Pakistan has constantly massacred the Hindus, reducing their population from 20 % in West Pakistan to 1 % now. In Bangladesh also the Hindu population has declined from 34 % in 1901 to 29 % in 1947 to just 7 % now. Hindus are regularly killed, women raped, abducted and forcibly converted to Islam, temples attacked, Hindus thrown out of their homes in Bangladesh and Pakistan.In Kashmir in January 1990, Hindus were given 3 choices by local Islamic leaders- convert to Islam, die or leave Kashmir. Nobody ever reconstructed houses for these Hindus. Nobody gave them financial compensation of crores of rupees. And nobody spent 35 lakhs per day on them. Nobody arrested the culprits and punished them.

Those who order killing of others or want others to suffer horribly, do not take the pains to do all that the Gujarat Government did. Not only did the Gujarat Government do all this the police also arrested 35,552 people as of 28 April 2002, out of which 27,901 were Hindus. Around 20,000 people were arrested as a preventive measure. No Islamic country (or our own country in Kashmir in 1990) or other mass murderers like Stalin, Hitler ever carried out preventive arrests to save the victims. And already 443 people have been convicted for rioting- the highest ever in Gujarat and indeed, in the country. No Islamic country has ever punished anyone for killings of Hindus, not even of the tallest Hindu leader of Pakistan- Sudamchand Chawla, who was killed by Islamic radicals on 29 January 2002.

And many have concocted many tales of rapes and killings,like the false claim that Ehsan Jafri’s daughters were raped, or Medina was raped, or the outrageous lie that a pregnant woman’s womb was ripped open and foetus taken out, when nothing like this happened. Nobody has ever lied and falsely exaggerated the killing of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh at the hands of Muslims, or made fake stories of Hindu women’s wombs being ripped open and foetuses taken out. Actually they have all done exactly the opposite. Killings of lakhs of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh have been ignored, rapes and abductions of Hindu girls have been suppressed ever after 1947.

Pakistan’s TALLEST Hindu leader, Sudham Chand Chawla was killed in broad daylight in Jacobabad on 29 Jan 2002 while returning from his rice mill. The culprits were not nabbed, nor was any compensation given to his family. He had in fact been complaining to the so-called civil society of Pakistan for years about the threat to his life, to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and yet nobody did anything. If this was the case with the BIGGEST Hindu leader, then what must be the story of ordinary Hindus, who have already been reduced from 20 % in 1947 to just 1 % now?

The PR work of the Gujarat Government indeed does not seem to be up to the mark. The media is of course guilty of ignoring all these facts, and needlessly infuriating Muslims by lying that Narendra Modi is responsible for harm caused to the community. Far from it, his government actually helped the victims- both Hindu and Muslim- by spending lakhs per day on them. 40,000 Hindus were thrown out of their homes by Muslims in the Gujarat riots and the Gujarat Government gave them relief camps and rehabilitation help too. Perhaps this was the only case in the world where oppressed Hindus were given state help!

More details of the help given by the Gujarat Government are given in the book (“Gujarat Riots: The True Story”). The SIT has also made some comments on this point, which are given in the book but not on this site. To know all those details, read the book.